| Description | Interview with A. Leslie Hay, recorded by John Hargreaves
Transcription:
H Leslie, I see you first entered the Arts Faculty in 1922. Could I ask you first of all why you came here to Aberdeen University?
LH I came to Aberdeen because I was born and brought up in Peterhead and of course Aberdeen was the natural place from Peterhead.
H You were thinking at that time of a career in the Law?
LH No, when I first came to the University I'd no idea of coming into Law. Like some people who had done reasonably well at school, I had the ideas of aiming for the Indian Civil Service, and from that point of view I started off with the idea of taking an Honours, trying for an Honours, degree in Maths and Nat Phil just as a decent degree, but in the course of my first year as a student I came to the conclusion that there was no real future for British people, white people, in India and having decided that the next thing was what would I do? And at that time I knew only one man in the whole of Aberdeen. He was a lawyer, although his father, who was also a lawyer, lived in Peterhead, and I approached this man and asked his views about the law and he said to me "the law is a fine profession provided that you never worry about your client's affairs:" in other words you've got to have a detached view of your client's affairs and view not only the client's side of the question but the other sides of the question and on the strength of that I decided to go in for Law and I also decided that the Honours course was a very lop sided course and that an ordinary degree would give me a much. more useful spread of subjects.
H Good. What were your memories of your teachers and your courses in the Arts Faculty? I suppose you changed over to taking some law courses after first year.
LH Well at that time it was almost the universal practice of people going in for law to take an MA degree first, although the MA and the LL.B degrees could be telescoped to a certain extent and normally one in the third year of Arts took some of the Law subjects which were joint to the Faculties of Arts and Law and that is what I did. I took the usual Arts things, Maths, French, English, Latin, Logic, etc. in the first two years and then in my third year I started into the Law subjects which were again joint to the Faculties of Arts and Law, Constitutional Law and Roman Law.
H How were you financed in your studies?
LH Well I think I was probably financed the way that practically everybody at that time was financed, by my parents. There were no large student grants; admittedly the Carnegie scholarships helped certain students with books, etc., but I don't know that they ever gave enough that students could live upon it, and from memory, with about one exception, I would think that all the students that I knew at that time were being financed by their own parents.
H What about the bursary system. Did you have a bursary and was there assistance to many of your contemporaries?
LH I did have a small bursary . When I was at school I entered for what we called the 'bursary competition' which in those days was a joint competition for Arts and Medicine, and I did have a small bursary, but the amount of the bursary was negligible and wouldn't really have assisted for very much in the way of any maintenance.
H And were there not, as you recall, many students to whom the bursaries were important, who got the larger bursaries?
LH No, I would say almost without exception, the students that I knew in Law, and also the ones I was familiar with in Arts were of middle class families where the families were sufficient to provide for the education of their families.
H In 1925 you started your LL.B. course. Were you also working as an apprentice?
LH Yes. I started on the very day when I graduated, a suitable date being the 1st of April, 1925. The same day I entered a law office and started my apprenticeship, and of course it was the custom then that one took one's law classes simultaneously with doing the apprenticeship in the office.
H How do you think the MA LL.B course compared as a preparation for legal practice with the alternative BL degree?
LH On the basis that one was supposed to be entering a profession rather than a business (and I think Sir Walter Scott used to say that in law one should be educated and not a mere artisan) then I think that the LL.B preceded by an MA was a better preparation for the practice.
H So the law subjects at that time were basic professional requirements. Would that be a true characterisation of the law portion of the syllabus?
LH Yes. There were laid down certain subjects which were compulsory and there were various subjects that you had to take a certain number of these that were optional in the sense that you could select from them.
H But these were all law subjects, or did you take as it were any general cultural subjects?
LH For the LL.B you did require the MA in advance, but for the BL degree there were no cultural subjects.
H Yes. What about teaching methods in the two faculties. First of all in Arts. Did you find University study very different from school? You went to school in Peterhead?
LH I went to school in Peterhead. Yes. I don't think there was any great difference. It was entirely lecture basis. There were next to no tutorial classes in those days. But you were very much. left to fend for yourself. In other words, you didn't have tutors or anything of that nature to assist you, but in certain somewhat difficult subjects that we found difficult, one or two of us would get together and maybe visit each other's homes or lodgings and discuss problems. I am thinking particularly of mathematics where frequently you took down your notes without comprehending what it was all about and then at night you had to try and work it out and understand it.
H This was just a traditional system in the student body? No teachers attempted to organise this sort of mutual instruction?
LH It was just the ordinary state of affairs.
H What about the Law Faculty. Did teaching methods there differ from those in Arts at all?
LH No. The teaching method was exactly the same. The only difference being that in those days the Law Faculty had one single member of staff who was a whole time member of staff and all the others were part time professional people who were practising solicitors in the town.
H That would be Professor Stuart.
LH Professor Mackenzie Stuart was the single full time man.
H Would you like to give your memories and impressions of Professor Stuart?
LH Well, I think in those days he gave us a very good grounding through his lectures, in what I understood in those days to be the Scottish legal tradition of working on general legal principles. Rightly or wrongly I understood that in the English legal tradition they always looked for precedent, similar cases in the past, whereas the Scottish tradition as I then understood it, was that you had certain legal principles and you tried to apply these principles to any situation that you had to deal wit It seemed to me a much. more flexible system than the English legal tradition.
H And the study of cases would come up in other courses or subjects?
LH The study of cases in those days was minimal. I believe it is quite different today, but in those days it was minimal.
H What about the other part time teachers in the Faculty of Law?
LH The other part time teachers were all men well up in their profession, busy practical men, and the result was that I always felt that you got as far as possible a practical grounding in the instruction that you got, not too academic but very practical.
H Was Professor Stuart an approachable person? Did you feel that if you had queries that you hadn't thrashed out with your fellows you could take them to him?
LH My general impression both in Arts and law at that time was that the teaching staff were quite aloof from the students and I have no recollection of ever approaching any of the professors or lecturers with any personal problem either in Arts or in law.
H Could we move on to other aspects of your student days? Where did you stay in term time?
LH In those days, like the vast majority of students, I simply stayed in lodgings and in those days Rosemount was the hub of student life and of course there were no student hostels or anything of that kind.
H What about leisure activities? Did you spend a lot of time in your lodgings, or in the Union, or in the library?
LH Well there was no Union in those days, not at King's at any event, and one just, leisure time was simply with those people who were in the same lodgings with you or going solo. In those days I did a lot of walking and cycling solo.
H Was there a Law Society of any sort? A law students society?
LH There was quite an active law students society who used to get well known figures from the south to come maybe once a term or something like that to address them. At other times it was more or less a small Debating Society.
H Did you have friends and companions outside the University community or in so far as you went walking the hills were you mostly with fellow students?
LH Almost entirely with fellow students.
H Were there many women students in the Faculty of Law?
LH To the best of my recollection there were none.
H Was there much. social or political interest or commitment among the students?
LH I don't think there was much. political commitment. There were some political student's societies, probably just about two and maybe the Conservative and Labour or Socialist, not very active, and I wasn't a member of either, and I think only a minority of students would have been involved with any of these societies.
H Did the general strike have any impact on the student body?
LH There was no impact on the student body so far as I recollect, in fact I only knew of one student who took any interest in the general strike and he published certain pamphlets at the time. He was the son of an Aberdeen lawyer and he didn't comply with some of the requirements about getting the printer's name on his publications and got into trouble with the police, but apart from that I don't think the students paid much. attention to it.
H Do you recall who the student was, and was his pamphlet in favour of the strikers or..?
LH I don't remember ever having actually seen the pamphlet or read it. I think he was supporting the strike, but I'm not sure.
H Now one or two short questions about the period between graduation and I have a record of your first appointment as being 1944, but I gather that you may have held part time appointments in the University before that.
LH No. That was my first appointment, and actually when, in 1944 when I was appointed I was still in the services.
H You've partly answered my next question, which was, did you spend all these years in Aberdeen?
LH Well, on account of my age, I didn't go into the Air Force right at the beginning of the war. Later on I had no particular wish to go into the Army, so I volunteered for the Air Force slightly earlier than I would have been called up.
H But you came back to Aberdeen in 1944 after having been away, or, I'm not quite sure of the circumstances of this first appointment.
LH Well, I was well established in Aberdeen before the war. I was a partner in a legal firm, and owned a house in Aberdeen. I was married, and the family were in Aberdeen so automatically I came back to Aberdeen.
H While you were in practice in Aberdeen you became a member of the Society of Advocates. Did the Society of Advocates as such have much. contact with the University as such? Could you say anything about the relation between the profession and the University I suppose in a sense they're almost the same people, aren't they?
LH So far as I know, there was no contact between the Society of Advocates and the University apart from the fact that there were a very few prizes given in certain University classes and these had been founded by members of the legal profession and other than mentioning these matters or possibly having representatives of the Society as trustees of these funds, there was no other contact at that time.
H So in 1944 you were appointed lecturer in Evidence and Procedure. Was the post advertised? How did you obtain the post?
LH It would have been advertised and I applied for it. It's rather interesting that many of these appointments [in the Aberdeen legal profession] seemed to go almost, but not quite, on a hereditary principle. My first boss, when I was an apprentice, was at that time lecturer in Procedure and Evidence, and when I served my apprenticeship there were two partners. One the senior, was lecturer in Procedure and Evidence, he was also the lecturer in Commercial Law. The other partner had the biggest court practice in Aberdeen and I spent most of my apprentice time with this other partner and did a vast amount of court work even before I was a qualified solicitor and therefore always had an interest in that subject.
H So were you as far as you know the only applicant for the job?
LH I don't know.
H Why did you take the job, why did it attract you?
LH Partially because of my interest in court work, partially the tradition that my first boss had been the lecturer, and vaguely in those days I probably had the idea that I could usefully pass on some of my experience to younger coming members of the profession.
H If you will excuse the question, was it financially attractive to take one of these posts, or did it involve a sacrifice of possible professional fees?
LH It was not financially attractive. I do not mean that you did it at an actual loss, but you might have made more money attending to other business matters. It was not the finance that was one of the reasons for going in for it.
H While you held the post, how did you divide your time and energy, so far as you could, classify between legal practice and teaching?
LH Well I had a very busy legal practice in those days. The lecture time came into the working day. All preparation for lectures and that of course was done outside office hours, at night and at weekends.
H Were you expected, was there any reference in your contract to research? I'm not quite sure what research might mean in professional law subjects, other than conducting your profession, but would you like to say if you have a concept or if there is a concept in the Law Faculty of Law research as distinct from practice?
LH At the time when I was appointed there were not so many people in the Law Faculty and I'm not aware that any of them were doing much. in the way of research Certainly I was doing no research, I was simply devoting my time to what I regarded as instructing in the essential knowledge which students would require when they came to apply it in professional practice.
H But this knowledge would have been enlarged and enriched by your own experience in practice?
LH Well naturally one spoke from one's own experience and knew the problems that are likely to arise in practice.
H But nowadays, I suppose a lecturer, a full-time law academic would have reference to carrying out research in his contract?
LH I have not seen the terms of any of these people's contracts. I imagine what you say is correct, but I have no first hand knowledge.
H But research as such would not have been a concept in the Scottish Law Faculty as distinct from the enrichment of teaching by practice?
LH Again I can't speak from first hand knowledge. It might well be that the original full-time appointment of Professor Mackenzie Stuart did involve him in some research, because at least one book on a legal textbook he produced, but as regards the part time people I should think that they confined their attention to lecturing.
H Yes. And in 1944 it was now of course Sir Thomas Taylor whom we'll perhaps speak in a moment, but there was still only the one full-time teacher in the Faculty.
LH I don't remember when the other full-timers started, but certainly there were not many, if there were any at all at that time.
H How did you conduct your teaching? Had the pattern changed, or did you attempt to change the pattern at all from what you'd experienced as a student?
LH Very largely I would say just the same pattern as existed when I was a student. And of course there were no modern aids in those days, visual aids or anything of that kind.
H Did you take an active part in the business of the Faculty? Or in the business of the University after your appointment at this time?
LH So far as possible, I attended all Faculty meetings and had my say along with the others.
H But did you sit on any wider University Committees?
LH No, I was not a member of any wider committee.
H Were you an active member of General Council?
LH No, I never took any active interest.
H Do you remember any of your part-time colleagues with their contribution to the University and the Faculty particularly clearly?
LH I don't think that so far as I know that any of them contributed anything outside the scope of their own particular subject.
H So perhaps we could come and talk a little about Professor Taylor. We could talk about him perhaps first as Professor of Law and later you might want to give your recollections of him as Principal. Would you like to talk quite freely about Professor Taylor in the Faculty?
LH I think the departments were very much. in watertight compartments, and really I had no contact with Professor Taylor as Professor. I don't know how he conducted his subject and of course there was very little contact with the Principal of the University after he became Principal.
H But you would know Professor Taylor in the course of Faculty business?
LH Oh I knew him in the course of......
H He presumably was permanent Dean was he when he was the only full-time teacher? He normally presided over the Faculty?
LH I think he presided and thereafter it did go the rounds, the Deanship.
H Yes. Yes. Well do you have any impression from there of Professor Taylor's influence on the teaching of law in the University? Did you get the impression he was trying to develop or change things as professor? Because certainly soon after he became Principal one finds changes in the Faculty structure.
LH I don't know if he ever attempted to change the structure of teaching in the Faculty. So far as I was personally concerned, never at any time from the days of my appointment until I'd left did any outside source, whether the Dean of Faculty or any other source, ever make any suggestions to me as to how I should conduct my class.
H But as regards the overall syllabus? To take one concrete example, I think Professor Daube was the first Professor of Roman Law and Jurisprudence in 1951. Do you recall anything of where the initiative for that appointment came from? Had Roman Law been taught before, or Jurisprudence?
LH Roman Law in my student days was taught by Professor Mackenzie Stuart and there were I think some part-time teachers of Roman Law before Professor Daube's appointment. The same as I was doing Procedure, there were others who did Roman Law and similar ancillary subjects.
H I've heard it suggested that Professor Taylor did give a great impetus, either as Professor and perhaps later as Principal, to the teaching of law with the appointment of new full time teachers
LH Well, there was a great growth of appointments of full time assistants and lecturers and in fact that used to be one of the worries that I personally had because there was a great tendency for somebody, perhaps an honours student, to take a PD., become an assistant, in due course become a lecturer, and some of them were teaching subjects which were basically of a practical nature who the teachers, the lecturers themselves had absolutely no practical experience, and it was a worry to me that they were not being the best preparation for the practice of a solicitor. Now in that connection, I would like to say that there were certain elements in Glasgow University in particular who said that vocational training should be no part of a University's function. But in the case of Scots Law, apart from University instruction, there was no other source of instruction, unlike England where they had a College of Law, and therefore I regarded it as essential that there should be some proper experience of the practice of law in the teaching of the law. But of course that of recent years to my idea has been remedied by the introduction of the postgraduate diploma which is manned by practical people almost entirely, and gives the practical experience so that the modern combined effect of full-time academic teaching and diploma practical teaching is probably a very good thing.
H Yes. But do I pick up from what you've said about the period before l961 that there was some disagreement among Scottish universities about the nature of University teaching?
LH I'm not aware, I'm not aware that there was any disagreement amongst the universities. I'm only saying my own personal feelings were that the tendency at one point was going far too academic and lacking in practical experience.
H And you're associating that with Glasgow standing for more ...
LH Well, I'm associating that with one particular professor in Glasgow who voiced his views in public and was basically to the effect that the function of a University should not be vocational.
H Could you name the professor?
LH I doubt if it's advisable so to do.
H Right. I expect some people will make intelligent guesses at the name. Coming back to Sir Thomas Taylor, you say you didn't have any strong impression of academic leadership. Would that be an unfair representation of what you said?
LH Well, I had very little contact with him. He was very pleasant. He occasionally had social gatherings in his own house and occasionally I attended those social gatherings and they were always very pleasant, but so far as his academic activities were concerned, I really don't know much. about them.
H Yes. I recall his social gatherings as Principal myself, but was this, was it normal would you say in the University as a whole, for professors to be somewhat aloof from their junior colleagues?
LH I think in the early days and again I'm talking now of my student days rather than after I was appointed to the staff, there was practically no contact at all between the professors and the students and I always imagined there was very little in the way of social contact between for example professors and lecturers. Now the only exception I would make with regard to that in my student days was in the case of Professor Davidson, the Professor of Logic, who, before becoming professor, had been a parish minister. He was an old bachelor with two sisters who kept house for him and he had a standing invitation on a fixed day of the week that any of the male students in his class could go to his house and they had a social evening, and he was very nice to them and laid on port and cigars etc. and had anyone with musical ability would give a song and so on, but that was entirely restricted to the male students, and once a session the lady students were invited and I'm told that on these occasions, Professor Davidson was never seen and his sisters acted as hosts for the occasion.
H And the lady students were of course invited on their own without the men?
LH Exactly. But apart from Professor Davidson, none of the other professors to the best of my knowledge had any social contact at all with the students.
H Had that begun to change would you say when you came on the staff or by the end of the war?
LH I think there was probably a breaking down of barriers but I still don't think there was much. in the way of social contact.
H At this time was there much. social life within the University community? Did your pattern of social life, social contacts change very much. when you came on to the staff?
LH My personal pattern didn't change at all and I didn't become involved in any social activities so I'm not really in a position to answer that question. But my own personal position didn't alter.
H Yes. Looking ahead a bit, because as you said at that time Professor Mackenzie Stuart was the only full time teacher, but in more recent years, how would you describe the relationships between part time teachers and full time academics in the Law Faculty in particular?
LH Well, I can only speak for myself there because, being in busy practice one had the habit of coming to the University to give the lecture and having given the lecture one returned to one's office, but my own personal experience has been that all the full time people that I met were always most friendly and if there was any problem relating to the speciality of these full time people, I never had the slightest hesitation in asking them for their expert advice and invariably got it. It was a very friendly relationship.
H In 1964, you became lecturer in Taxation for a new department in the Faculty. Why was the new department set up this time?
LH Well, I always had the idea that lawyers were not being properly educated with regard to Taxation. The position was simply this that at the time when I started to be interested in this matter, if you mentioned Taxation to anybody such as a chartered accountant, his thoughts immediately turned to income tax. Being a lawyer, Taxation to me was more a matter of death duties and owing to the increasing rates of Taxation, the whole subject was of increasing importance. Chartered Accountants got some lectures in their education on law, lawyers got absolutely no education in Taxation, and I started agitating to get some instruction in Taxation and it actually started in 1961 when, being rather persistent in the matter, it was authorised to give a few lectures, a course of lectures in a summer term, and I started lectures on Taxation law in 1961 and to the best of my knowledge and belief that was the first instruction in Taxation law in any University in the kingdom. And it is symptomatic of the feeling at that time that after agitating to get these lectures, the very first question that was put to me after I was told that the lectures could be given in the summer of 1961, "Which accountant do you suggest should give it?". I always was of the opinion that Taxation law was law. It wasn't a question of accountancy, it was law and was a proper subject for lawyers, not accountants. And this summer course ran for a little time, until I decided that it was worthy of a full scale course to become a proper graduating subject and that I couldn't tackle two subjects at the same time although there had been an overlapping for a period, so I relinquished the Procedure and Evidence and took over a full graduating subject of Taxation law.
H So this is your own initiative rather than the University of Aberdeen's initiative? What about the requirements of the Law Society?
LH Well, I think the Taxation law is one of the present requirements but it wasn't in those days.
H No. What's the relationship between the Aberdeen initiative and the Law Society's requirements?
LH Well I think throughout the profession both in Scotland and England since then Taxation law has become a very important subject and of course the departments of Taxation law have enlarged enormously particularly in places like Glasgow and Edinburgh where they have very big departments of Taxation law, but Aberdeen was the first.
H Well, congratulations. Taxation law then has become since you set up this course a much more important part of the law syllabus in Scottish universities. Why should this be so?
LH Well, I think the main reason was the terrifically high rates of Taxation in Britain. At its peak, income tax was charged on the highest incomes at 97 ½% and then there were death duties, I forget the exact top rate, but certainly it was up as high as 85% and people became very tax-conscious, particularly business people or anybody who had been able to build up a certain amount of wealth and there was a conflict between the tendency towards socialism throughout the country in its more extreme form that there should be no inherited wealth, and the desire which is fairly natural to many people if they have spent their lives building up something, they like to think that there is something left which they can pass on to their family.
H Would it be an unreasonable comment on what you've said to say that Taxation law consisted in advising people how to avoid the intentions of a law while complying with its letter?
LH No. I, I think it was laid down even in the House of Lords that nobody was under a legal obligation to regulate their affairs in such a way as to pay the maximum amount of taxation, and one's clients in practice wanted to be advised as to how they could minimise taxation, particularly on the case of death duties, and equally they often found that just in their ordinary affairs, they didn't realise the taxation consequences of what they could do. Particularly businessmen might, say, go to their accountant in the first instance and I was under the impression in the old days that the accountants couldn't see very far beyond income tax, and it might well be that a course of action which was advisable from an income tax angle might not be the best thing from the point of view of estate duty and therefore I felt that the lawyer had a function to perform.
H Good. Thank you very much. Well, I'll probably be seeking advice from my own lawyer in this context pretty soon and I'm sure he will have been well taught. Despite this, there have been in recent years a great many more appointments of full-time academic lawyers in the Faculty, and the balance in the Faculty, the staff of the Faculty is now no longer what it was. Would you like to comment on the change? How it's affected you and how you view this?
LH Well, as the change was taking place, I felt that more and more the teaching was in the hands of people who had little, or in some cases, no practical experience of the application of what they were teaching. Now one appreciates that the function of a University is probably more theoretical than practical but in Scotland one is faced with the position that only through a University could the future practitioners acquire knowledge of what they had to practise.
H So you would have found this change not helpful from the point of view of the students. Do you see any compensation for it in the sort of lawyers that …?
LH Well, I think that what I have indicated was probably becoming appreciated for example in the minds of the Law Society of Scotland, and that kind of thinking was probably behind the institution of the Postgraduate Diploma in Law. The diploma teachers so far as I know are almost without exception people with practical experience and I think that maybe now a fair balance has been struck.
H Has this led to any tension of a personal academic nature between academics and practitioners within the Faculty?
LH Oh, I think there so far as I know [there] would be complete co-operation.
H Thank you. Could we, a last long section of this interview, talk a little more about students? Now you've already said something about the student community in your own student days, indicating that it was very much. left to itself. I don't know if you'd like to add any more to your recollections of the student body in the 20s before we come on and compare it with changes since then?
LH Well, I would say that both as regards the staff and the student body, they tended to be more static in those days. In other words there weren't the changes occurring. Your staff probably spent the whole of their lives at Aberdeen. They didn't change about from one University to the other. The students tended to be all from the Northeast of Scotland with a few from the Western Isles. Most of the Western Isles people gravitated to Glasgow. Again there was a difference that the majority of students came from a middle class background. There would be next to no students of working class background in those days, and in fact I've only one, a clear recollection of one student from a working class background, an exceptional man who worked in the shipyard and took evening classes to gain a qualification for the University, and went on to get a first class honours degree but that was most exceptional. From that point of view the students of the day I think were probably rather better educated on average when they came to the University than possibly the students of today. One cannot expect somebody from an east end home to really to have the same chances as somebody who has grown up say in a professional household where there are plenty of books, where perhaps the level of conversation is entirely different from what you could get in an east end establishment.
H When you came up in 1922, there would still be ex-servicemen of the First World War around?
LH A very large proportion of the students in those days were ex-service and in those days there was no guillotine to cut off the number of times they could attempt a degree exam. There were quite a number who started off with the idea of going in for Medicine, found they stuck at the second prof., the pons asinorum, then they gravitated to Arts, maybe didn't make a go at that, then they gravitated to Agriculture or a B.Com. degree, and they went on, some of them went on for several years after the war. I don't know when they started coming in, presumably about 1919 before the first of them arrived. So there were a lot of them still on the go when I was a student. I would say the only time that I personally came in contact with these older students was in the Debating Society. There was a very active Debating Society and my recollection is that people of my own age group straight from school had no hesitation in getting to our feet and airing our views. We were not over-awed by these ex-service people.
H Good. So you weren't quite so cut off from student societies as you suggested earlier on?
LH Well, that was the only society that I took an interest in. I might say in that connection that at that time there was a lectureship in Public Speaking which was primarily designed for Divinity students but it was open to any student from any Faculty to attend. It wasn't a graduating class just possibly a single term subject, I don't remember exactly but certainly I attended this lectureship in public speaking and to the best of my knowledge there is no such lectureship today and I think particularly for law students it's a serious gap in their facilities.
H Who was the lecturer? Was it a Divine or …?
LH He was a minister by the name of Mursell, and it was useful for a lawyer.
H Turning back to the ex-service students, they corresponded to the same social type of middle-class North-easterners? Were they mostly ex-officers rather than ex-soldiers?
LH I wouldn't know the answer to that and I would doubt if that were quite so true of the ex-service because I imagine that most if not all were on Government grants.
H You weren't heavily administered I gather as students in those days?
LH You weren't administered at all. You had to fend for yourself. You came to the University, you or your parents had to find lodgings for yourself, you had to fend for yourself. You made up your mind as to your curriculum. There was one Adviser of Studies for the whole of the University, and that included Medicine and everything else, and there were no tutors to guide you, and whether you applied your mind to your work or not, nobody seemed to care. It was entirely up to yourself whether you did well or made a mess of things.
H And the Secretary of the University was already the famous Butchart, Colonel Butchart?
LH Yes. My recollection is that the whole administrative department of the University at that time consisted of Mr. Harry Butchart, the Secretary, who had a Typist or Clerkess. There was a Cashier who had a Clerkess and I think there was one man, an Adviser of Studies, for the whole of the University.
H Yes. Though it has changed since then. As a student you wouldn't know Colonel Butchart well but I think you know him better later on?
LH I knew him outside the University circles later on through his interest in the hills, as a member of the Cairngorm Club.
H Could you like to comment at all on his personality, because he's clearly a major figure in development of this University?
LH In the earlier days, I think he was quite the military man. In those days the quad at Marischal College was a very busy place. All the ex service people seemed to have motor bikes in those days and it was the tradition that when you got a motor bike, you'd extract the innards from the silencer and these students would be making a terrific noise in the quad and every now and then Butchart would come out of his room to tell them off. So he was in those days he was very much. the person who was trying to impose some discipline on a somewhat unruly collection of students.
H Were you at Marischal very much, because the Kings-Marischal division was rather different then from what it is now?
LH Yes. I think that only Arts and Divinity were at Kings in those days. At Marischal you had Medicine, Law, Science, Agriculture, Administration and the Law department was above what used to be the Senatus Room beside the entrance archway and the Law Library was adjoining that part.
H If we could go on to students as you've known them and as they've changed in your years on the staff, had conditions of community life changed very much. in 1944? Had they been affected I suppose by wartime conditions at that time?
LH Well, by 1944, the position where most of your students were middle-class was beginning to fade out and that tendency grew enormously within the next few years. In my student days I think there were twelve Law students in my year. When I started lecturing in 1945, I think it varied anything from twelve to fifteen for two or three years after that and then it rapidly increased until at the end of my period as lecturer in procedure, I think I had one hundred and thirty five students in my class and along with this you had an increasing number of lady students coming in. There were no lady students in the earlier days.
H Were there already lady students in 1944? Did you have them in your first classes?
LH I don't remember, but certainly there would not have been more than maybe two, if there were any at all. One point that I noticed in later years there seemed to be a poorer element amongst the students. In the earlier years they were all, one might describe as a sort of medium qualified, whereas in later years you had some exceptionally good students at the top of the class and you had a middle of the class, but you also had a much. poorer number of students, I won't describe them as dunderheads, but poor academically. An element which I don't remember being present in the smaller numbers before.
H Can you date the beginning of the divide at all?
LH Well just as the numbers increased.
H Would this have anything to do with the introduction of a full-time LL.B in 1961?
LH It could be that they didn't have the educational background of a first degree. That could be one of the reasons, and I think, I may be mistaken, that there was a slight tendency to lower standards in the Faculty. I know that there were certain elements in teaching my own subject that I felt that the student had to acquire a certain competence in it and if the student didn't have that competence then they didn't get a pass mark, and I think my subjects got the unenviable reputation of having the biggest plough in the Faculty, but I stuck to my guns.
H When you talk about lowering standards you're talking about examination standards......
LH examination,.....
H Not entrance standards.
LH No, examination standards.
H But all the same, with the expansion in numbers, although the requirements in certificates may have been held constant was it getting easier or harder to get into the Law Faculty?
LH I should think it was much. the same, although I believe more recently they have had some restriction on the number of entrants. In the old days no restriction was necessary.
H You referred too to the larger number of women in the Faculty. Do you relate that at all to the changing standards which you noticed or would you say that the larger number of women has been good for the Faculty?
LH I think on the whole the women students were probably better academically than the men in the sense that they were perhaps more conscientious and one might use the word, they tended to 'swot' more than the men but that is not to say that I think that the Law was a good choice for them.
H Could you expand on that remark, why Law is not a good choice for women? It sounds a little sweeping.
LH If one generalises there are always exceptions to any general rule. But I always had the idea that law in particular, one had to be able to take a detached view of any matter. I'm talking about the practice of the law, not the study of the law. And when a client comes into a lawyer the client has his own ideas about his own side of any dispute. He is psychologically blind to the other side of the dispute and the lawyer has got as best he can to find out the opposite side. Until he can find the opposite side he doesn't really know what his client's position is, and frequently he has got to give advice to the client which is unacceptable to the client. And I had the feeling that through a certain amount of first-hand experience of meeting lady solicitors in the profession that many of them tended to become too emotionally involved with their client; that if, for some reason, action was taken which was detrimental to the client to their client they felt that you were trying to harm them personally.
H We talked about the ex-servicemen of World War I. Do you recall any particular changes with the return of the ex-servicemen of World War II? Or ex-service women? Were there any ex-service women in your experience in the Faculty?
LH I don't remember any of them just as ex-service. In more recent years there were one or two, but not many that were called mature students but I think they came more as mature students possibly having done some other occupation rather in the capacity of ex-service.
H Do law students tend, or did they tend, to constitute a distinct group within the student body? I suppose part-time LL.B. students were busy as apprentices, did they tend to spend their leisure time in University circles?
LH Well, I don't know whether they spent their time as a group in one place or another but there was a period when the law students regarded themselves in almost an elitist idea, which again contrary to modern socialistic views, I rather favoured. For example, there was a period when at the graduation of the law students, all the law students would turn up very well dressed, dark suits and white bow ties, every single law graduate at the time was wearing a white bow. Now as far as I know, that tradition has gone. They did have a certain pride in their own Faculty.
H And did that lead them to take a leading role in the affairs of the general student body or did it lead them to withdraw?
LH I'm not able to judge that.
H As the faculty's expanded, have you noticed any striking change in the proportion of those going on to practise as solicitors, those going to the Bar, or those seeking salaried employment with Local Government and so on?
LH There's been, over a long period, a complete change. In the earlier days one could be certain that every single student was going in for the practice of the solicitor profession, or with very few exceptions going to the Bar. Latterly, there's been an increasing tendency, probably because of the lack of opportunities in the profession, for more and more to go in…. The biggest outlet is to local authority work, where there's been a great increase in the legal branches of local authorities and also there's been a tendency to go into some of the bigger business establishments where the establishment consider that a legal training is a useful adjunct.
H Do you think the present LL.B. provides a good education for somebody who's going to use his legal education only as an adjunct but is not going to be employed primarily on pronouncing on legal questions?
LH I think it is an asset. But equally I think that the old scheme of having an Arts degree first was also an asset and I think it's unfortunate that because of financial considerations of grants etc. this has gone by the wayside.
H You recall your own student contemporaries as not being very socially or politically conscious. Have you noticed any change in that respect, since the second World War?
LH I would guess that the many students are more politically conscious. People have been told by the politicians that if they don't like anything they should organise and protest and voice, sit in strikes and matters of that kind. There was none of that in the earlier days.
H Have there been any events in national or international politics which have particularly roused the law students?
LH I'm not aware of any but I do think that no doubt the students like everybody else have changed their general views. For example, in my student days, the Lord Rector of the University was almost invariably a man of national stature. You didn't appoint a pop star as Lord Rector and some of the Lord Rectors who were in many cases self made people would air views which would be quite unacceptable in the present social climate. I think in particular of F.E. Smith, the Earl of Birkenhead, and I remember that the general theme of his rectorial address was that there were sharp swords which the intelligent could grasp and carve out a position for himself. Now that was quite contrary to the modern ideas of equality. At the time it did not give rise to any protests.
H And Smith was presumably a favoured candidate of the law students? Would it be true that law students in Scotland tended to be more sympathetic perhaps than others to Scottish nationalism, perhaps with a small 'n' rather than with a big SNP?
LH I don't remember any indications of Scottish nationalism, although I do think in the legal profession as opposed to the students, there was a certain pride in Scots Law which we tended to regard as being in many respects superior to English Law, and even at the present time I think the tendency is for England very belatedly to follow on behind Scotland. I think of such things as legal rights. In Scotland for centuries, it was quite impossible for a man to cut off his wife or family with the proverbial shilling. Then our jury system. I don't believe that it's possible in a complicated case for twelve good men and true to reach a genuine unanimous decision, but in England they had to say that they were absolutely unanimous whereas Scotland has always been able to make a verdict by majority and just recently, and we were in the throes of it at the moment, England is trying to introduce something akin to our procurator fiscal service of a prosecution service. In many respects these are public matters as opposed to some of the finer legal niceties but in many respects I think that England is now following on Scotland and there is a certain pride in the profession of the law that they think they are in some way superior to England.
H Yes. So perhaps nationalism with a small 'n'?
LH Yes.
H Would there be any other tendency in political outlook of Scottish Law students? Perhaps to be on political right rather than the left?
LH Well the old Scottish tradition was (a) of independence and (b) perhaps frugality and therefore I think most of the students in my younger days would not relish being dictated to by the civil servants, they have that idea of independence and equally they would object to squandering of money. Perhaps that is conservatism, I don't know.
H Thank you. Have you any general judgement…? Could you dare try and sum up the strong and the weak points of the graduates of Aberdeen Law Faculty over your long experience?
LH Well, I think they were probably much the same as the graduates of the other Scottish Universities. I'm talking in the days when there were four Scottish Universities. I don't know anything about the more modern Universities. I think the Aberdeen ones were much. in a par and the North East of Scotland had a tradition of reasonable education which I think their graduates maintained.
H If you started again as a teacher in the Faculty would you want to see the work in the Faculty change in any way? Would you be a reformer, or a reactionary even in any respect?
LH I think that any reforms that at one time I would have welcomed have in fact been implemented.
H Thank you very much indeed Leslie.
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